The AZA issued a directive that all suitable African elephants in US facilities should be bred in order to assist with species preservation efforts. The larger elephant facility is needed only if the African elephant is going to be bred in situ at RPZ. A male would have to be brought in (or artificial insemination used) and the new baby would require more privacy and more space than existing facilities provide. RPZ’s concern seems to be that if the African elephant must be transfered to another zoo to breed, due to RPZ not having appropriate facilities, the Asian elephant at RPZ will be left alone (contrary to AZA guidelines for social animals such as elephants) and will have to be transfered elsewhere, leaving RPZ without elephants indefinitely. That is why they are pushing hard to fund the new facilities: they want to breed elephants, and they want to avoid any risk of losing elephants as part of their collection.

Possibly a compromise would be to send the African to another facility to breed and find a suitable companion for the Asain elephant from another facility so that Tucson doesn’t lose it’s elephants, but also doesn’t have to splash out 8.5 million for a new elephant breeding habitat. I don’t know if it is possible to obtain another elephant who needs a home, but it seems that RPZ is discounting the possibility quite heavily and seems quite sure that if they transfer the African to breed that they will almost certainly lose the Asian as well. They may know all too well the odds of finding our Asian a suitable companion, or they could have a developed institutional tunnel vision focused on the exciting possibility of expanding the elephant habitat and breeding our African here. If it is the latter, then there may be a way for Tucson to save the money and keep elephants at RPZ, an outcome which all parties would likely accept.